PinePhone Pro Announced • Hacker News Board

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#161

Post by opencl » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

gorgoiler wrote: post #127

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #119

It has a Quectel EG25-G modem. I've not used this particular device, but I have used Quectel GNSS modules, and they've been a surprisingly helpful company to work with. I'm a nobody, and working with Sony, Trimble, or ublox has been an exercise in frustration; you have to convince a salesperson that you're a big company and you can sell thousands of devices in order to just read the datasheet. This one does have some…

Is an LTE band the same as a category? (As in the iPhone X was the first cat16 capable device, for example.)

No, the category is a performance specification (higher category is faster), the band is the frequency of the radio signal.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#162

Post by bluecatswim » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

aero-glide2 wrote: post #105

If anyone from India bought a PinePhone previously and is no longer using it, feel free to ship it to me :D

Do they ship here? A lot of products shipping from China have trouble getting to India.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#163

Post by djent » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

It is frustrating to me that despite the blunt verbiage about it being a beta device for software and hardware developers, people even here are griping about it being not ready for everyday use. If a free and open-source mobile operating system is missing software support for a feature you want, please contribute to its development.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#164

Post by pcdoodle » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

officeplant wrote: post #36

I've had the Braveheart and later Mobian releases of the Pinephone. Currently have a Pinebook Pro. I'm super excited for the Pinephone Pro to finally get moved to rockchip hardware even if it is just a downclocked 2016 SoC with a few more tweaks for Pine64. The progress they are making is great but still far from daily driving for me personally. I'm just glad the community exists. Even with the bugs and flaws the pro…

The CPU has a passmark of around 2000 I think. It's clearly quite an upgrade. Also, they have kept backwards hardware compatibility (Pogo Pins, Screen size and Button Placement), that's a huge motivator for a hardware eco system to pop up around it. Can't wait for these tires to warm up!

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#165

Post by md8z » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #155

md8z wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any comments on the Purism customer support because I haven't bought their phone, but as a Pinephone owner it's good to have them around. Purism has been investing a lot more in the software side of things. They work well with upstream. Their new projects are good too, phosh and libhandy came from Purism and are both extremely useful on the Pinephone.

I’m not trying to discount Purism’s software work, but hearing so many people wait four plus years to have phones delivered or more than a year for a laptop - unable to get refunds, it leaves a bad taste. My own limited experience is that I wound up on their press list and then they sent me an unsolicited request to “invest” in their company (by way of a convertible note…lol, no thanks) and apparently they’ve done th…

That's a shame because I do think they are doing a lot of things right as far as being an open source company goes. The software people who work there don't seem to have anything to do with any questionable financial decisions, but they get associated with that just for being there.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#166

Post by opan » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

barbacoa wrote: post #120

Question Why are projects like this starting from scratch and not forking from the abandoned Ubuntu phone OS?

I got the UB Ports Community Edition of the PinePhone and found Ubuntu Touch to be a very unpleasant experience and not at all what I signed up for. Luckily postmarketOS was exactly what I wanted and I moved to that within a week or so of owning the device.

Ubuntu Touch mounts stuff read-only, pushes you into using webapps, discourages using normal shell stuff like you would on a desktop GNU/Linux system, and has some poorly-working container system for if you wanna use shell stuff. It honestly felt worse than using Termux on an Android phone.

With pmOS you can install nvim, firefox, mpv, minetest... Things just work how you'd expect. It's like a single board computer (raspberry pi, etc.) that comes with a screen and other things already attached. You can ssh into it and update your packages all at once. It's really nice.

I think it's a stretch to say they're starting from scratch, but if you just mean the UI, Manjaro supports Lomiri (the UI from Ubuntu Touch) while also giving you a more normal OS experience. I'm glad to have some diversity in the desktop environment. Phosh is one of the more polished options, but has the issue of being GNOME-flavored and having all the issues you'd see with regular GNOME. Plasma Mobile feels more Android-like and familiar, but is still rough around the edges. Eventually it will hopefully be as good as Phosh and people can choose whatever they like the look and feel of more.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#167

Post by opan » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

billyjobob wrote: post #39

I put my Pinephone back in its box about 6 months ago. Have they fixed the massive lag between touching the screen and it responding yet? That was the main reason it wasn’t usable for me.

Things are properly 60fps and hardware accelerated now if that's what you mean. postmarketOS is a lot smoother now than it was at first.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#168

Post by 3np » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

dbeley wrote: post #69

jjmellon wrote: post #17

I received a Pinephone in the latest shipment, about three weeks ago. I also got the convergence dock to be able to attach a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I am extremely motivated to get off Android on my phone, and yet my Pinephone has already been discarded (and I never even put a SIM card in it). There are far too many out-of-the-box bugs and glitches to consider this a usable product. For example, the convergence…

What OS did you use? I use mine with Phosh (tested Mobian and Archlinux) and I don't have the same experience at all. The device is still severely underpowered though so the Pro version with a much better CPU is a welcome change.

Plasma Mobile does not have autoscaling of windows like Phosh does.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#169

Post by djent » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

barbacoa wrote: post #120

Question Why are projects like this starting from scratch and not forking from the abandoned Ubuntu phone OS?

Pine64 itself is a hardware company. The software side is community-driven, and UBports (the old Ubuntu phone OS) is one of the operating systems you can install on your PinePhone.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#170

Post by hcal » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

belval wrote: post #7

I curious about the opinion of HN on the absence of 1080p (it's still 720p). Specially this part of the blog post: > The decision to maintain the original PinePhone’s screen resolution of 1440×720 was made early on; higher resolution panels consume more power and increase SoC’s load, resulting in shorter battery life and higher average thermals. A few extra pixels aren’t worth it.[1] While I understand the point they…

I have one and I'm using it right now. It is more than fine. My eyes aren't perfect so maybe others would care more but the image is super crisp and looks really good.

The screen outclasses the rest of the hardware.